Without limiting the scope of the invention, its background is described in terms of virtual ground circuits used in analog system design and further in connection with an integrated circuit system which implements a convenient virtual ground circuit for use in an analog amplifier circuits using an operational amplifier, as an example.
Heretofore, in the field of single supply circuits in general, there have been several approaches to designing a virtual ground voltage reference which allow an analog circuit, for example an inverting amplifier built around an operation amplifier, to accept as input a signal centered around ground and having both positive and negative values over time, and create an output which reflects the entire waveform without loss of data due to waveform clipping. To prevent the clipping of the input waveform and a resulting loss of data, a virtual ground is required to terminate the input voltage signal and the output load and thus create an output signal which is centered around the virtual ground voltage.
Some typical approaches to designing a virtual ground voltage reference are to create voltage divider circuits using discrete components. These discrete solutions have several drawbacks which disadvantageously affect the circuits in which they are used, including poor load regulation, excessive power dissipation, large circuit board area requirements, and excessive numbers of component requirements. Accordingly, improvements which overcome any or all of these problems are presently desirable.